Random Excellence: P. H. Emerson

Peter Henry Emerson, Confessions, 1887

Although his pictures look romantic and pictorialist to us today, Peter Henry Emerson, a wealthy, intelligent, and eccentric photographer, clashed with the photographic establishment of his day in championing a more direct and naturalistic style. "Confessions" depicts and old woman and a young woman washing dishes in a fisherman's yard. (Note the similarities to this photo.) It was included in his book Pictures from Life in Field and Fen, now essentially unseen outside of museums.

The classic North American study of Emerson is by Nancy Newhall, wife of Beaumont. Beaumont Newhall, if you don't know the name, was the author of a longtime standard American history of photography (I'm not sure of this, but in 75 years I don't think it's ever been out of print) and the first Director of the Department of Photography at the Museum of Modern Art; but Nancy (who allegedly had an affair with Ansel Adams) was no slouch as a scholar herself. The two most readily available books about Emerson right now are John Taylor's 2006 book The Old Order And the New: P. H. Emerson And Photography, 1885–1895 and Christian A. Peterson's 2008 study Peter Henry Emerson and American Naturalistic Photography. The latter concentrates on Emerson's considerable influence on his younger admirers in America—one of whom was Edward S. Curtis, who we were discussing recently.

Peter Henry Emerson

Emerson was related to the American transcendentalist and essayist Ralph Waldo Emerson.

Mike

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Comments

[Rob Atkins]

My knowledge of great photographers of the past has grown by one; my Amazon Wish List has grown by two.

[struan]

Emerson's "Naturalistic Photography" is available in a number of formats from archive.org:

http://archive.org/details/naturalisticphot00emerrich

It's worth a read but for me at least the special pleading on the part of trained artists (read: gentlemen with sensibility) sticks in my throat.

[Chris Crawford]

Emerson later gave up photography and declared that it wasn't art. (so did Cartier-Bresson).

[Mike Johnston]

"the special pleading on the part of trained artists (read: gentlemen with sensibility) sticks in my throat"

Different era.

Mike

[Mike Johnston]

"Emerson later gave up photography and declared that it wasn't art. (so did Cartier-Bresson)"

I don't know that C.-B. did that, so much as he just got old. His kind of photography was a young man's pursuit.

Mike

[Gary Nylander]

My gosh, Peter Henry Emerson's photograph, "Confessions" is just wonderful, could be a painting.

[John Camp]

Cartier-Bresson always seemed to me to be more of a reporter than an artist; a lot of his most famous works would be what a newspaper photographer might hope to get on a dull day, when the photo editor kicked his ass out of the building and told him to get some feature art.

Is it true that the Newhalls jammed modernism down the throat s of the photographic establishment, and used their position to keep dissenting photographers out of museums and shows and books?

[Chris Crawford]

Mike, HCB gave up photography in the 1970s to take up painting and drawing.

[Mike Johnston]

"Is it true that the Newhalls jammed modernism down the throat s of the photographic establishment, and used their position to keep dissenting photographers out of museums and shows and books?"

No, it's true that Newhall deplored William Mortensen and A.D. Coleman championed him. I side with Newhall on that.

Mike

[Mike Johnston]

Chris,
I'm saying the truth is a bit more nuanced than that.

Mike

[Lynn]

Emerson's "Picking The Reed" (link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Ricking_the_reed.jpg) is one of my all-time favourite photos. Lyrical.

Interesting also that Taschen has a book by the same name, "A History of Photography: From 1839 to the Present" (The George Eastman House Collection) - this is a fine book in its own right, but it doesn't mention Emerson, presumably because Eastman House doesn't have a copy in their collection - or perhaps he just wasn't included in the book. Nancy Wynne Newhall's book on Emerson is referenced in the bibliography.

[Tom Duffy]

Wow, look at that shadow detail. Must be film! :)

[Phil Heywood]

Hello Mike, I was familiar with this painting (link:http://www.bbc.co.uk/arts/yourpaintings/paintings/the-bow-net-97850) in my local Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool, UK, some years ago. Then, in the 1990s, I came across Emerson, and 'Setting the Bownet' (http://www.metmuseum.org/Collections/search-the-collections/190040033?rpp=20&pg=1&rndkey=20121014&ft=*&deptids=19%7c44&what=Metalwork&pos=4). I had suspected the Goodall painting was made from a photograph: the distant scenery has an exquisitely painted boke, making Gary Nylander's comment even closer to the truth and very much in keeping with Emerson's theories of photographic naturalism. It had been pointed out to me, however, on studying the painting, that there was a problem in the way the reflection of the female figure was depicted, being out of alignment and with an impossible hand on the oar; from the photograph we can see the cause as the changed viewpoint. Emerson and Goodall were friends, but the truth of their naturalism was, as you say above, more nuanced. Goodall was well aware of alignment (http://www.photographymuseum.com/emersonrushyshore.html).

This account (http://people.netcom.co.uk/j.stringe/page3.html) also adds some information on their painterly intentions.

[David Goldenberg]

Emerson's stated reason for deciding that photography wasn't an art was the work of Hurter and Driffield, who laid out the principles of sensitometry. Before that, Emerson happily believed that the tones in a photograph were infinitely malleable. Somehow, knowing that there were technical limitations to that malleability removed the art from photography.

http://www.moma.org/collection/artist.php?artist_id=1724

David